Oleg: So we actually took the money and we started working on our first company called Maide, where we built a way to control 3D CAD software using the iPad. And we worked on that for about half a year before we ended up getting into the Y Combinator program. So we headed down there and we actually ended up starting a brand new idea.

Anton: Maide was really cool, the technology was cool, but we didn’t seem to be getting a lot of traction, so we decided to do more of a consumer product. We thought about it for a bit and we tried to solve some kind of issue that we had in our own lives. At the time, we had all moved to California and some of us were away from our girlfriends, some of us were away from other people that were important to us, so we decided to create this way to keep in touch with the closest person in your life and we called it Pair. It’s basically the super SMS for couples where you can share photos, videos, and text messages. And do cool stuff like “thumb kiss.”

O: The problem was basically that we felt very disconnected from our partners. I was bouncing between Skype, SMS, and all these other tools that were really meant for you to talk to everybody – all your friends, Facebook, that type of thing. But what I really wanted was an easier way for me to share with just my girlfriend. So that’s what we accomplished. We made an app that basically pairs two people, and then we have this shared timeline where everything you share is really private and it’s just easy to talk to that one person.

V: What is your biggest achievement since winning VVF?

O: I think that Pair has basically been our biggest achievement at this point but it’s only at the beginning of the project really, it’s only been public for a month. So I think our biggest achievements will be coming up in the next few months.

V: What have you learned in the past year?

O: A lot.

A: Build something that people want. Make sure you solve a real-life problem when you’re building a product.

O: Definitely listening to our users much more, talking to them much earlier in product development. I think we spent much of our time building Maide in almost a bubble, whereas with Pair, we started right upfront talking to people about the app. We developed it with our own girlfriends and with other couples in Y Combinator. I think we also learned a lot about each other. You know, having a team of 5 people that have worked together now for a year, we know all of each other’s strengths and weaknesses and I think that experience will help us as we go forward.

V: What do you think you would be doing if you didn’t win the VeloCity Venture Fund?

A: I don’t know, from my perspective we probably would be doing exactly the same thing. The money helped but it didn’t make the experience.

O: I think that if we didn’t have the 25k from VeloCity we would have been working really hard on finding other ways to get money  to start the company because we were pretty set on what we wanted to do. What the VeloCity Venture Fund did give us, though, was the ability to stop thinking about that and get back to working on our product. Which was great.

What’s next for Pair?

O: We want to really take Pair as far as it can go. I think there’s a lot of space for a more intimate type of social network in the world.

A: We want to make Pair the app that you think about when you want to communicate with your partner. It has to be fun to use, it has to be pleasant, it has to be useful, it has to be fast, it has to look good. And those are a lot of problems to solve. Basically concentrating on getting all of that done as soon as possible. And building a team. It’s very important to surround yourself with good, smart people.

The Pair team has received $4.2 million in funding & also recently released their Android app. We are very happy for them and glad that they’re back in the VeloCity Garage!

@UWVeloCity

Good Reads:

App developers, this is a must read: This Is All Your App Is: a Collection of Tiny Details.

We finished up our So You’re A Startup series last week with How To Deal With Startup Life.

VentureBeat posted an amazing video of the ridiculously automated dorm room created by a Berkeley student. We are still waiting for someone in VeloCity to do this!

Paydirt took an interesting stance on not being compatible with IE, We Don’t Support Internet Explorer and we’re calling that a feature.

And on TechCrunch, a special feature on Andreessen’s startup talk in a Stanford classroom, Marc Andreessen Visits Peter Thiel’s Stanford Class To Talk Startups, How He Invests & The Future - some great advice shared, we’d like to see more of this at uWaterloo!

With all the hype around Kickstarter lately, Kicksaver seems like a great idea, Kicksaver Lets You Be Someone’s Last Minute Funding Hero.

VeloCity News:

Speaking of Kickstarter, our VeloCity alum’s Pebble Watch got to $10 million in funding - and with that, the watch is sold out! Huge congrats to Eric Migicovsky and team!

We received an exciting number of applications to our VeloCity Venture Fund. Interviews are being held today in the Student Success Office, we wish everyone the best of luck! Stay tuned to see who our finalists are and watch it all go down this June 7.

Events:

A Thinking Ape is coming to uWaterloo tomorrow, check out their startup talk at uWaterloo’s Tatham Centre (TC), details here.

Vidyard is having their tech startup recruiting event this Thursday at Chainsaw. It’s always a big hit so don’t miss it! Sign up here.

And lastly, we are having the VeloCity Garage Open House on May 31. Come out from 3-6pm to see some of the best startups in Waterloo! RSVP here.

That’s all for this week!

@UWVeloCity

Any specific kinds of events or blogs you’d like to hear about? Let us know in the comments!

Why address this topic?

Startup stress is something that everyone starting a company deals with, no matter where they are or what they’re making. It’s universally relevant – learning about stress prevention will give you the tools to improve your mental, physical, and emotional health as well as the productivity of your startup.

We wanted to go straight to the source, to the people who actually experience startup stress on a daily basis, so we asked the teams in the VeloCity Garage for their advice. Based on their feedback, we’re breaking down the stress of startup life into 3 parts: the general stress of being a startup, startup depression, and startup burnout.

Dealing With The General Stress of Startup Life

One of the first things everyone we talked to mentioned was sleep and making sure to get enough of it. We got suggestions to sleep anywhere from 6 to 10 hours a night – so basically, know how much sleep you need in order to stay awake and feel fully functional all day and get that much sleep as often as you can. Do not underestimate your need for sleep, it is critical to long term success.

You also need to take a break every once in a while! Schedule some time every day for doing something you like other than working on your startup (and try not to feel guilty about it). Sure, this is time you could spend working, but think of it this way: the longer and harder you work without breaks, the less productive you become. You need those breaks so that you can be focused and 10 times more productive when you come back to work.

If you have a startup with more than one person (which you probably do), you’re bound to have some disagreements. G Wu from Maluuba recommends solving all conflicts as soon as they come up. Ignoring something that’s bothering you will add to your stress, produce tension, and decrease your startup’s productivity.

Something that can easily cause a lot of stress is being disorganized. We got some great advice from Adi, cofounder of BufferBox, “Take notes, write things down otherwise you will forget. There are 101 different things that happen on a daily basis so keep your records straight.” The more organized you are, the less you’ll forget, and more likely than not, the less stress you’ll feel.

When you start to feel this initial stress, focus on the things you can actually do. Surprisingly enough, you’re not going to be able to do absolutely everything. You are human – you need to sleep, you need to eat, you need to go outside and occasionally talk to people. And even when you’re working, you should try to have fun. If you’re doing something you love and making something that you love this shouldn’t be a problem. And when you have those little successes, let yourself feel good about them. Jee, cofounder of Polychart, told us, “Even when we’re stressed out, we see Twitter posts and we’re like, oh my God those people are actually using our product.” Celebrate the tweets of your happy customers and the likes you get on Facebook. These little things are going to keep you going and there’s no need to minimize them.

Startup Depression

Startup depression often happens when you’ve been working at a startup for a while without gaining any traction. Basically, all of the time you’re thinking: nothing I’m doing is making any difference, why do I even bother, I’m going to fail.

How do you deal with this kind of depression?

This is when having a cofounder or a strong team or even a good friend comes in handy. If you’re feeling like your life has no purpose and your startup is going no where, talk to someone about it! Especially the people on your team who are working with you and are probably feeling the same way. Most problems have solutions so you need to hash it out until you find one. Do you need to try a different approach? Do you just need throw out your idea and start over?

You might realize that what you’re doing isn’t right or that you’re going about it the wrong way. Jenny Harvey, a long time VeloCity resident and founder of EcoLogix, game some great advice on dealing with mistakes, “I have high standards for myself and am a recovering perfectionist. In the start up world you’re going to make mistakes – a lot of mistakes. I’ve learned to forgive myself for mistakes and move forward.” The longer you take to get over something that’s happened to you or your startup, the worse off you’re going to be.

So what, you screwed up, your business has no potential customers? Get back up and start it all over again. Don’t just sit in your room and delude yourself into thinking that changing 100 lines of code will make your startup profitable.

Gareth MacLeod, cofounder of Matinee, told us, “I don’t think I’ve ever been depressed in a period of my life when I’ve been exercising a lot and had a healthy social life.” He mentioned that some people, especially startup people, get depressed because of the environment they put themselves in day to day. If you’re stuck in a dark room in front of a computer screen 24/7, you’re bound to feel unhappy. Sound familiar? Gareth’s advice to you, “You know the solution – go out and exercise, talk to people, try and smile – just do it and you’ll feel better.”

Startup Burnout

Burnout is what happens when you’ve been stressed for way too long, you’re doing nothing but working all the time and you’re frustrated that your life is a mess.

How do you not burnout?

Gareth recommended taking weekend trips outside of the realm of what you usually do – go somewhere and get yourself into a different headspace, only check your phone if absolutely necessary. Not burning out comes down to understanding what you need to function like a normal person. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and crazy, take a vacation: 2 days to a week, whatever you need.

Not getting to the point of burnout is difficult, especially with what startup culture has been dictating lately. You have to move fast, you have to move faster, why aren’t you moving fast enough? You’re never going to get to the point where you think you’re moving fast enough, so then you’re going to start staying up until 5 am every day and only sleeping four hours and eating crumbs off your carpet because you don’t have time to go grocery shopping. And the worst part is you feel like you get to portray yourself as this self-sacrificing hero because the media really praises this kind of “dedication.”

This post by Michael Arrington, former writer for TechCrunch & VC, completely glorifies sacrificing your sleep and well being for your startup. He sources Jamie Zawinski’s (cofounder of Netscape and Mozilla) 1994 diary as proof that this insane lifestyle pays off. Don’t let this convince you of anything. Zawinski’s rebuttal explained that he doesn’t think startup founders should sleep under their desks and that it’s okay to leave the office by 6pm every day for your underwater basket-weaving class if you want to.

We’re calling it startup life for a reason. You are running a company and you are freaking out daily but you still need to have a life. As an entrepreneur, you subscribe to this crazy lifestyle – you want to hack until your wrists are sore and you don’t remember what day it is – but DON’T DO IT! Your mental health is truly your biggest asset. If you don’t have your mental health, then really, what do you have? You need to understand yourself well enough to know what makes you stressed, depressed & burnout, and you need to find the things that counter that early on.

A huge thanks goes out to all of our startups for their advice – especially Gareth MacLeod from Matinee for really grounding this topic for us.

Although the series is over, we’re still going to push out some great stuff, so follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google +, and keep up with what we’re doing!

@UWVeloCity

How do you deal with startup stress? Tell us what we missed in the comments!

Matt: Since winning the VVF we’ve just been doing a lot of coding, a ton of programming – that’s all we need to do right now, a lot of development. We’ve been talking to a lot of customers as well and getting them on board, a little bit of marketing but not too much, mostly programming.

V: Did you spend all the money?

M: It’s almost all gone.

V: What’s your biggest achievement since winning the VeloCity Venture Fund?

M: I guess just getting more customers on board and making them really happy.

V: What have you learned in the past year?

M: Mostly about managing people and how not to do that I suppose. I mean we made a ton of mistakes and burned a lot of money – it was a good learning experience. It’s something I’ve never done before – I can program fine, that’s no big deal, but actually running a business and doing all of that has been a good learning experience.

V: What do you think you’d be doing if you didn’t win VVF?

M: I’d be doing the same thing. Just continue to work on Lumos. It would’ve changed – would’ve been a lot slower to work on it full time, but we’d still be doing the same thing.

V: What’s next for Lumos?

M: Build a better product, get more customers on board. And that’s basically it.

Since our interview, Matt pitched Lumos at GTAN‘s startup LaunchPad and won 3rd place, $10,000. Huge congrats to Lumos – we’re excited to see what they do next!

@UWVeloCity

First up was Jason Sun pitching a solar panel camera hybrid that can help you watch your driveway.

Then Drew Gross pitched Batadase,

Eric Ho pitched SciGit, an online collaboration platform for scientists,

Ronuk Raval wants to make your to-do list even more helpful with Lepton,

Then Julia pitched SkillTrader, a platform to find people to teach you skills one-on-one,

Michael Shao pitched EndlessBread, an app that will tell you which grocery store is selling all of the items you need for the cheapest price,

Hoon Cho pitched a game for the under-utilized Windows Phone,

Tired of getting your bike stolen on campus? Kevin Burt pitched BRATS, an extremely secure bike rack,

Tim Lasswell pitched PalGrid, an app that lets you see where groups of your friends are with some anonymity,

Shale Craig pitched an app that lets you schedule ordering flowers so that you never forget your girlfriend’s birthday again,

Gobi pitched a new way to think about mobile gaming,

Worried that you aren’t going to get all the credits you need to graduate? Sally’s idea is to make that easier by working with students to ensure they know which courses they need to take.

Jenny Harvey pitched new features for EcoLogix – letting consumers know what products are the most eco-friendly for their businesses.

And last but not least, Tom Price pitched Group Chat – an app that lets you talk to your group of best friends.

A huge thanks to everyone who participated in VeloCity Bootcamp this term! We had a fantastic time, learned a lot, and can’t wait till next term!

@UWVeloCity

(The rest of the pictures from last night can be found on Facebook - like them & tag yourselves!)

Have any feedback about VeloCity Bootcamp? Let us know in the comments!

Throughout his presentation, Brett referenced the pitch that Mike McCauley, cofounder of BufferBox, did to win the VeloCity Venture Fund last term.

He also referenced this great article that includes Dave McClure’s pitch tips. One of the key takeaways was talking about more than your cool technology and establishing emotional context for your listener – if you make them care about what you’re doing you’ve almost won.

Brett’s office hours in the VeloCity residence can be found here. He’s available on Sunday from 2-4pm. VeloCity residents: you can book meetings with him whenever you need some feedback, advice or coaching.

We are ready to see what you’ve come up with during hack weekend, see you in the VeloCity Garage for Pitch Night tonight!

@UWVeloCity

The key takeaways from Devon’s talk: your cofounder needs to be someone you’re extremely close to who you trust to stick with you through the hard times of starting a business. Startup founders do everything – make sure your cofounder is someone who’s willing to put forth that effort and dedication, someone who will do whatever it takes.

Then it was time to talk about shipping – what hack weekend is really all about. Gareth MacLeod, cofounder of Matinee, and Scott Tolksdorf joined us to share what they’ve learned from hacking projects in short periods of time.

What they want you to know before you start hacking: focus on your MVP (because what you think will take 1 hour will probably take 3), communicate with each other (be close enough to high five), don’t try to reinvent the wheel (use existing platforms and build on top of them) & don’t be afraid to ask for help!

Then we started off the 2 minute pitches. The VeloCity residents with ideas pitched them to potential team members.

A huge thanks to Devon, Gareth & Scott for coming back this term and getting our residents pumped for the weekend, we really appreciate their time!

Keep hacking away – we’re excited for Monday night, pitch night, to see what all of you have come up with!

@UWVeloCity

(& as always, pictures from last night can be found on Facebook)

We started off Bootcamp Day 3 with Tom Beynon from the law firm McCarter Grespan Beynon Weir LLP. He talked about setting up your company as a partnership or a corporation and the benefits of both, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and intellectual property (IP). The biggest takeaway from Tom’s talk was not signing anything you don’t understand or haven’t fully read, as well as the value of IP to potential investors. 

Next we heard from Christine Reid from Ernst & Young – her most impactful point was straightening out your accounting right away and dating absolutely all of your documents. Don’t want until you have a giant box of receipts to talk to an accountant; keep your records straight from the very beginning.

The summary of all of this: don’t be afraid to ask for help – accounting & legal are extremely important and if you don’t deal with them now, they’ll come back to bite you later. After hearing all of this expert advice, we started the startup speed dating!

It went extremely well, everyone got the chance to meet each other and share their ideas and skills.

Check out the video,

We are very excited for today – finding your cofounder, shipping and the start of hack weekend! See you tonight!

@UWVeloCity

P.S. All of the pictures from last night can be found on Facebook.

Mike Kirkup, our director, started off with the Lean Business Canvas. He gave the residents the lowdown and then went into an example: a lemonade stand. We had lots of creative participation from the crowd (VeloCity students seem to want to make an app for everything) and got down to the point of the hack weekend coming up. Make sure you use the lean canvas to test your assumptions and find out if they’re true and if, in the end, any customer will actually want your product.

Then Satish Kanwar and Arati Sharma joined us from Jet Cooper. We learned about designing a product for usability and focusing on that usability instead of just hacking something cool. Satish recommended going out there and talking to your potential users, saying, “Rarely are you the sole expert on something you’re building for somebody else.” He talked a lot about user experience design, finding your “golden feature” and making sure it’s easy for users to get to it. It was a great talk and we’re thankful that Satish shared his experience with us!

Next we split off into groups and did some intense brainstorming!

One of our favourite ideas was a scheduling map for extremely busy washrooms.

Looking forward to tonight’s bootcamp at the Accelerator Centre – we’re going to cover accounting and legal IP. And some startup speed dating will also go on!

See you tonight!
@UWVeloCity

(And if you want to see the rest of the pictures from last night, they’re on Facebook)

Our director, Mike Kirkup, started off the night with VeloCity 101 – the lowdown on everything VeloCity.

After VeloCity 101, Liz Koblyk, networking expert, gave our residents lots of great information – getting back to the basics that often get overlooked when it comes to meeting new people. She brought things that seem like common sense to the foreground, including what your body language tells people, how to start a conversation, and what’s considered acceptable behaviour. A great point she really stressed was that you should approach people and assume they already like you. This will put you more at ease and make the conversation go more smoothly.

Then the residents got the chance to actually network – they put Liz’s tips to use, it was an awesome icebreaker!

A huge thanks goes out to everyone who came out, especially Liz for sharing her fantastic tips with us!

With such a great start, we’re extremely excited for tonight! Stay tuned for our recap of startup web and product design & the Lean Business Canvas tomorrow as well as the final post in our So You’re A Startup Series, How To Deal With Startup Life.

@UWVeloCity